Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/326

304 Vanua Lava (if any survive the ruin caused by the labour trade in the latter island), are a proof of considerable and very ancient skill in cultivation. The esculent caladium is grown for food in Egypt and in Syria, and its use stretches in an unbroken chain from China throughout the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans; it is not by any accident that a dry garden, as opposed to an irrigated one, is called uma in Sumatra and in the New Hebrides. The respective shares of men and women in garden work is settled by local custom. Cultivation has produced a wonderful variety in yams, bananas, bread-fruit, and no doubt other common food-producing plants; I have a list of eighty names of varieties of yams, and sixty of bread-fruit, grown in the little island of Mota, most of which an experienced native recognizes and names at once. It may be said generally, that the natives are fond of planting flowering shrubs and sweet herbs about their villages, but this is much more seen in the Banks' Islands and New Hebrides than in the Solomon Islands. The beauty and variety of hibiscus, croton, dracsena, acalypha, amaranthus, are surprising; no village is without its ornamental plants and flowers. In the Banks' Islands they know how to graft the various kinds of croton; taking two young branches of equal size and breaking the end off each, removing an inch of the bark from the stock and the same length of the wood from the scion, bringing the bark of each to meet exactly; this is done in damp hot weather only.

(4) Weapons. The use of the bow is universal in the islands with which we are concerned; but the bow is not universally the chief war weapon. The spear is in some islands so conspicuously the fighting weapon that it is easy for one who